Stitches & Threads
by Regency
Summary: John's new wardrobe draws more than its fair share of attention. Sherlock is not amused. Sherlock/John
1. Shirtless

Author: Regency

Title: Stitches & Threads

Summary:

Author's Notes: Based on a BBC Sherlock Kink Meme prompt here in which John gets some kind of makeover and the resulting increase in male attention makes Sherlock jealous. On second and third reading of the prompt, I may have interpreted it differently than OP intended. Sorry, OP. I went for jealous and protective rather than jealous and envious. I hope that's okay.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from _Sherlock._ They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

~!~

John looks bitten and kissed. _Kissed? Kissed._ Sherlock shakes his head to clear it. He can't explain, but he's certain about this. John looks kissed. He looks roughed up and over and ravaged. There are scratches on his skin and bruises on his ribs, and Sherlock doesn't believe he's ever seen John smile that widely. The other man exhales a chuckle before it becomes a titter.

_Near hysteria, then_, Sherlock thinks, but manages to smile in return. It's relief. If John can laugh, he's in one piece. If John can laugh, Sherlock hasn't found a way to break him yet.

Lestrade insists the medics check John over despite his protests and he goes along, bare-chested and light-eyed, still bubbling over every once again in humour that Sherlock has yet to understand. The medics go from worried to amused themselves and one of them winks when John descends into boyish giggles. That only makes matters worse, though for whom Sherlock can't say.

He has crisp bills falling out of his pockets. There is lipstick on his collarbone. He reeks of a multitude of colognes he doesn't wear. There are powder burns on his fingers. He can't stop smiling. Sherlock is baffled.

"Are you all right?" he asks, because, no, John doesn't seem to be.

John is submitting the care of the EMTs, ignoring the sting of iodine to watch the coppers run. Sherlock has already forgotten the case. _Unimportant, deleted_ . All that matters is that John is undamaged.

John finally sees fit to elucidate the situation. "That was a bachelor party."

Sherlock waits a moment for him to continue before impatiently prompting him, "Yes, and?"

"It was for Anthea's brother."

"Interesting." It isn't.

"He asked for a good luck kiss and gave me his number on the way out the back door."

"I see." He doesn't. He also doesn't want to.

"Anthea was there, too." '_Adelaide,'_ Sherlock wants to correct. Doesn't bother.

"Oh?" Sherlock shifts on his feet.

"Someone tried to kill her." He isn't snickering anymore though his amusement remains palpable.

Sherlock side-steps the medics to grab John's arm. He loosens his hold where it bleeds. "Were you hurt?"

John hums, quietly content to inspect the scrapes and abrasions that deck his strong, square hands. Sherlock wants to read the story they have to tell, but the details have been lost and his sharp focus has deserted him.

"John?"

"Oh, no. No, that was the best night I've had in a while. And all I had to do was get my kit off."

Sherlock grinds his teeth and swears murder on every person that contributed to John's shocked state. "Name names."

"Couldn't if I wanted to. Aliases on top of aliases." John sighs, eyes wide enough to contain solar systems Sherlock can't begin to recall. "I don't think I've ever kissed that many spies in one place. Well, maybe once, but that's classified. Don't tell Mycroft."

Sherlock manages a smirk at the mere suggestion of that conversation. "I won't." He takes John's dominant wrist in hand to test his pulse for himself. The man is a little more than tipsy, flushed to mid-chest, and thoughtful. His scars throb with his heart and dance with his breath. Sherlock understands to his ganglia why someone with everything to wager and lose might risk a kiss.

"They liked my ID tags," John mentions off-hand. "Liked pulling me by them." Sherlock notes that John is no longer wearing them. "Someone tried to hurt Anthea, so I hurt him with them. He didn't like that so much." _Or the gun_, Sherlock hazards wrly.

"Mycroft will be grateful." Sherlock knows how his brother dotes on his long-survived PA, and knows that he will take any threat against her as an attack on his person. He pities them if they have survived John, though he questions the likelihood of that.

John becomes starry-eyed at the thought. "I think one of his bodyguards kissed me good night. He looked familiar."

"Aren't you the popular one?" he quips, rolling his eyes and doing his level best not to envision just this.

"You told me to blend in."

"Yes, but I didn't expect you to parade around pantless, John. A discreet corner would have sufficed."

"Corners were all taken. Center stage was free, though."

"Needed a bit of Dutch courage to make it so, I see."

John straightens right up and grins all the wider. "Oh, the first one was definitely Dutch."

Sherlock is not bloody amused. But the EMTs are and the Yarders are not far behind. Sherlock should know to expect this, that wherever John goes without him will either result in catastrophe or triumph. He knows this to be a sort of victory. John has put Mycroft in his debt, which can only bode well for their future meetings with this archenemy.

On the other hand, John has become a commodity for the eye in a way that he wasn't before. Sherlock can sense the over-enthusiastic perusals from all quarters: Yarder, pedestrian, and emergency. They are the shallowest breed of idiot, seeing John as only the sum of his muscles and scars. They see a soldier now, rather than a doctor, a hero rather than a sidekick. They've eschewed daily blindness for hysterical sight. It galls him in a way he hasn't come to expect at all.

Sherlock sneers at the first simpering prospective hanger-on he sees. He doesn't care for the way others watch John now they know for certain he's brave, brilliant, and battle-scarred. Their unobservant eyes have never noticed that he was all these things before, clothed and armoured. To Sherlock, he was never less.


	2. Glasses

Sherlock regrets his decision to have John go undercover at the university. It's nothing John's done to turn him off; quite the opposite, in fact. John is a hit with the students of introductory _Anatomy & Physiology_. He knows his subject backwards and forward, both due to his experience in Afghanistan and the crash course Sherlock sat him through the night before. He is soft-spoken and personable, just the right side of self-conscious of the auditorium of young students listening to him speak. He could be louder, Sherlock expects, but it isn't as though anyone in back is there to _learn_ or anything so productive. No, they've come to scope out the instructor who reminds them of the father who never loved them enough and the sort of man they'd like to take home to meet him.

Sherlock thinks it's repulsive. He _doesn't_ think of the fact that he's seated in back, too. He's learned all this before; John's ineffective though well-meaning repetition need not be retained. (He gets along fine with this father: their mutual agreement never to speak suits them. John would hate him on sight.)

At centre stage below, John is uniformed in pressed trousers and a smart shirt with a solid sweater vest to round it out. His sleeves are rolled to just under his elbows, as they tend to be by the final session of his lengthy days. He looks worn out but not beaten, something of a reassuring smile remains on his face belying his scuppered yawn. John turns momentarily from his class to reach into the podium.

_ Ah, the moment has arrived._

His careworn blogger sets a pair of rectangular frames on his snub nose. "Sorry, bit of a long day," he excuses and carries on, blessedly unaware of the wave of seduced sighs that pummel Sherlock's sensitive ears where he sits. Sherlock presses his palms more tightly together, trying and partially failing to observe past the stench of pheromones surrounding him. There's a fledgling serial killer in their midst whom they may be in position to apprehend, if only Sherlock can concentrate.

_Young enough to pass for a traditional student. Perhaps in fact an enrolled student. May have already completed the course but sits in on lectures to brush up._ Their perpetrator has an appreciation for formal learning Sherlock respects though he doesn't share it. He remains a course or so away from his degree in Chemistry. Given that it's yet to impact his work, he doesn't see a reason to pursue it. Mycroft and Mummy pester on the matter at least once annually to no avail.

Sherlock makes a note to review the headshots of the students enrolled in each section of the course. John says something and the class laughs. _Half of them don't even understand it. A joke about valence electrons?_ Sherlock is pleased, reluctantly. It appears John's been reading Sherlock's website, after all. _The only one_, John is likely to tease. Sherlock minds much less than he could. He doesn't think there's a worthier readership to be found.

The class ends on a high note and the hall empties at a glacial pace, a line of students queuing up for words with John. Sherlock catalogues each one and checks them off against the vital statistics they've provided to the university. _Enrolled, visiting, disenrolled but unaware, skiving off another class to be here (wrong textbook), enrolled, graduated, back for another degree (not in this subject), early placement._ 'Boring' is too generous a description. The quantity of mobile phone numbers indiscreetly crowding John's podium reads as equally mind-numbing. _He'll want to call them, men and women both, but he won't._

When the crowd has been reduced to a singleton, Sherlock descends from his place at the top of the auditorium to where John is speaking to an overeager straggler. _Average height for a woman, light eyes, olive skin, and dyed hair: Besotted._ John's perched on the corner of his desk, peering up at the young woman attentively. _The glasses persist, naturally. _Sherlock notes the breathiness of her voice immediately, surmises that her eyes are more dilated than required by the fairly lit room, and pinpoints the moment she has summoned up her courage by the rush of blood to her cheeks. He quickens to slip into the space between student and acting teacher, gleefully.

"John, we have reservations."

The look John confers upon him is the least impressed he's appeared to date. "Do we?"

"Mmm, yes. The Savoy at seven with my mother, don't you remember? You've been promising to meet her for months now and she's in town. You aren't backing out, are you," he continues as though the girl isn't there. "I'm beginning to think you aren't serious about our future at all."

John sucks his teeth and grits them before planting an unconvincing smile on his mouth. "Right. Your mother, Mummy dearest. Can't wait. I hope you invited your brother, because I'll need to give him a call if you forgot." He firmly shoves Sherlock aside to speak to the girl, who, Sherlock muses, appears precisely as engrossed as she was to begin with. _Odd, the implication of a present relationship is usually enough to repel most interested parties. Suppose she's another sort of woman._ "Savannah, I'm afraid, we're going to have to cut this short, but you can contact me via email and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

She clasps her hands in front of her and smiles, teeth blinding. _Bleached, store brand. Lovely_, he almost rolls his eyes. "Thanks, Doctor. Have a great evening. Both of you." She takes her leave with a gallant wave. Sherlock replies with a mocking facsimile. John smacks his arm with an A3 notebook soon as the door swings shut behind her.

"Be nice! Or there'll be more than one person in my classroom looking to kill."

"You'd be driven to remorse in minutes. If you're lucky the guilt would kill you before boredom set in." John, staring after his departed student, hasn't a word of reply to that. He wets his lips. _Really, John, a student?_ Sherlock is unclear as to whether his mortification is at John's poor taste in general or relative to the obvious.

"Sherlock, I've just had a thought."

He doesn't suppress his snort this time. "Shall we take out an advertisement in the _Times? _This shining occasion is one of such rarity that it must be shared. Please, do. Your thoughts are always so entertaining to me."

Another _whack_. "Wanker!" John glares up at him, eyes made more striking for being magnified. _His eyes aren't only blue. _"_Anyway_, that girl, the one who we've just been talking to?"

"What about her?" Sherlock would rather delete her out of hand, plans to do it when he can.

"Sherlock, there isn't anybody named Savannah in this class." Narrowing his eyes, Sherlock reviews the names on his mental roster. The only matches he can find are quickly discarded for unsuitability.

"Nickname," he hazards, knowing that to be wrong.

"I don't think so." John's hunches, though scientifically unsound, have a worrying tendency of being correct. _She wasn't exhibiting arousal. Or not _only_ arousal. Excitement, adrenal response. She recognized both of us._

Sherlock's next thought is, _That's our killer. Bugger me. _He is on her trail in seconds, John sprinting at his heels full-tilt, no questions asked. They get their killer, but those damnable glasses are lost in the subsequent pursuit. _They rather suited John_, Sherlock thinks, as the student body would likely attest. Sherlock isn't sure he doesn't feel a moment or two of loss, himself.


	3. Hipster Nightclub Chic

**Quick AN: I've reordered the chapters, so what was the newly posted chapter 3 is now chapter 2. This chapter is the former chapter 2. You may care to check again. Sorry for the confusion.**

* * *

John is turning flirtation into an art form during working hours. Sherlock is pretending not to notice. It isn't his job to care. They have a case and the work must take priority over whichever pretty dalliance has drawn John in tonight.

But Sherlock cannot help being distracted by the one who scrapes neat, clipped nails along John's jaw. The two-days' stubble makes for a grating sound, as does John's laugh thereafter. The shortish ginger, eyes of indeterminate colour, leans over and kisses his prickly cheek. John, still smiling, leans in as well and turns his head just enough that their lips nearly brush. Sherlock has seen enough affairs ignite to read the spark that flickers where their eyes meet.

"John!" he snaps at his assistant, his colleague, his partner who is otherwise engaged. _This will not happen_. Not while Sherlock is standing there, exposed, and John is a feast for other people's mouths. The ginger fellow—_pilot , day labourer, slightly inebriated (palm calluses, improbable bulk, faintly flushed)_—pouts. He is willowy, bordering on starved, and Sherlock can read the hunger in him for something richer than food, can predict how many bites he'd take off John to answer it.

John who is unshaven and dressed in the worst of the best: fitted jeans that accent his compact build and flatter his toned legs, a slightly rumpled collarless button-up, and an argyle cardie. He should look_ridiculous_, because he has never dressed like this before.

Yet, this man is the fourth man to want him tonight.

_No_, Sherlock corrects himself, _the fourth man to openly acknowledge it._ There have been others, but this isn't that sort of club alone. Though John is hardly the main event, the confidence he moves with has sent ripples all the way up to the VIP level. Sherlock ought to be elated for the case; all he is bothered, instead.

John flickers an admirably discreet eyebrow toward the bouncer on the spiral staircase ahead. Sherlock nods. _Go, this is what we need._

He watches John wind through the crowd easily for someone who rises just above the shoulders of most. He catches sight of anonymous fingers wandering across John's nape and silhouettes curling to utter halting whispers in his ear, before a sudden sly grin that stops him cold. Then, Sherlock sees the bouncer _see_ John and he is, for a moment, possessed by something green and vicious to drag John back to the dance floor before he can wander too far from reach. He does not care what John is wearing that he hasn't worn before; he has no desire to share.

He curls his fingers into his pockets instead, one hand's worth going to text Lestrade. The sooner this evening ends, the sooner he can have his blogger to himself. He doesn't want John here anymore.


	4. Bespoke & Ready to Wear

Sherlock has been waiting for five minutes by the time John reaches the taxi. Sherlock had let the first one go when he realized that John wasn't directly behind him. Now, he knows impatience has twisted his features into a snarl. He doesn't care. He's sick of this.

"This is a crime scene, John, not a pub. I'll thank you to find a more appropriate occasion to interview prospective bed mates." He climbs into the taxi and, as expected, John follows. They're off.

John sighs, as though he wasn't the one to hold them up in the first place, and adjusts the lay of his navy blue blazer. It lies smooth across a crisp poplin button-down, spread collar emphasizing the length of John's neck, the strength visible in its tendons, and the desert tan that persists in hanging on despite John's being a year out of Afghanistan.

These clothes—gifts from Mycroft; of thanks, no less—suit him, bring him out of the commonplace and into the thoroughly distracting. Sherlock knows he has not imagined the turn of curious heads when they walk down the street, and it's no longer Sherlock alone they're watching. Men, women, and both or neither watch John with their fingers draped across their clavicles, pearls staunchly clutched, and he _hates_ it. John is not for public consumption.

"I wasn't trying to keep you waiting, Sherlock. I was right behind you before that bloke grabbed my arm. He wanted a word with me."

Sherlock knows that John is so accustomed to his lapses into silence that the latest one goes unnoted per usual, for the best undoubtedly. He _knows_ the man wanted more than a word. The number to his mobile mars a slip of paper that ought to be burning John's inside pocket through but isn't. Sherlock find himself irrationally angry that the laws of physics don't defy themselves to please him just the once.

"Don't be dull. The last thing he wants to do is talk with you. In fact, I'd hazard that his plans for your mouth have little do with the spoken word and everything to do with thoroughly assessing the extent of your gag reflex." He says it, he means it; he does not have to have met the man to know it.

John is aghast. "Sherlock! You can't just say things like that." His eyes flit toward the back of the cabbie's head. The elder gentleman doesn't appear to be listening, but Sherlock sees his lips tilt in amusement in the rear-view. _At least someone finds this humorous._ Sherlock doesn't.

"I can and will. I'm always having to explain the obvious to you, John. Why should this be any different?"

"It isn't polite."

Sherlock scowls. "_Nothing_ worth saying is polite. He wants to take you back to his flat—no, a hotel. His wife wouldn't like you in their bed—and undress you with his teeth. Then, he plans to shag you senseless."

John blinks, then narrows his eyes at Sherlock in that dangerously assessing way he sometimes has. "Putting aside the fact that I know he's married, because I saw the ring, how did you know the rest?"

Sherlock straightens up, reaching back into his short-term memory for the indicators he picked up in his five-second glimpse of the man in question. "Ring, as you said. Polished, though, so happy, but an adulterer; he wouldn't leave her for you. He licked his teeth when he had your arm. He did it twice. Most people lick their lips when they've intercourse in mind, yet he ran his tongue across his teeth when he touched your sleeve. He was thinking of the fabric, perhaps even buttons or your skin, and how it would feel beneath his mouth. And that he was attracted to you was obvious by his approaching you at all."

John levies a single eyebrow curiously. The curiosity rings false, however, and Sherlock feels apprehension begin to coalesce as heat in his stomach, gastric acid churning in hereto unexplained distress. He's given something away, he has, but what?

"And the 'gag reflex' bit?"

Sherlock rolls his shoulders, a shrug too miniscule a motion to express what he does not know. "Obvious." Everything is, actually, except for why that is the answer he gives.

"I see." John's gaze has surpassed shrewd to become knowing, though it has yet to pass into mocking. Sherlock this small mercy on luck. There isn't any sand for him to bury his head in, here. The remainder of the ride to Baker Street is conducted in silence while John absently fingers his sleeve cuffs and Sherlock forcibly deletes thoughts of what other types of cuffs would grace those wrists so well.

It is his least successful deletion since the smell of chlorine. He hopes, nevertheless, that the dreams it brings will be the sweeter.

John pays the fare, despite Sherlock's intention to do so and steps out after he's already come to the door of 221. The other man is a warm presence at his back as he lets them inside and remains a pulsing a shadow as they go. 221a is still during the climb to their flat, Mrs. Hudson off to visit friends for the night. Sherlock is shrugging free of his coat to toss it where it will fall when he falters, shirtsleeves that he has seen yet not touched whispering past his fingers the moment he sets the Belfstaff loose. He cannot help but to follow.

Sherlock catches John's wrist, but the other man doesn't stop. John has shed his blazer and is shutting the door to the sitting room behind him. Sherlock thinks, _Finally_, and goes to pull John against him, but John won't come. To the contrary, he takes hold of Sherlock to propel him into the wall, latching onto his pulse point where his head tilts back in the impact. He breathes, "Oh," to the ceiling and it is a revelation made up entirely of John's lips.

Sherlock cups John's skull and musses his hair, pressing John as close as intimacy permits, perhaps more so than language allows. John seeps into his hollows, a knee in the void between his thighs, fingers fitting between ribs, exhales at the furrow of his clavicle where his mouth has latched anew.

Sherlock _keens._ He's forgotten how words do, how to words, how to...his tongue has taken refuge at the roof of his mouth, he couldn't _say_ anything if he cared enough to speak. But he doesn't, for John rocks onto his toes to make a go of Sherlock's jawline and ear and that notoriously tender spot below that disarms so effectively as to be cruel. John is a jagged question mark pressed neat to him and, as any question in need of answering, Sherlock must first touch to observe.

His methods keep him grounded, keep him on his feet. Keep him from begging for what he cannot name. _Have me, I've wanted you._ _They wanted you, I hated it. Tell me you'll burn his number._

John's shirt is a cotton and silk blend, fitted across broad shoulders that taper into a trim waist. The back is pleated to center. _He keeps fit_, Sherlock notes, not for the first time. Those dreadful jumpers have kept him hidden, body secreted in plain sight. Sherlock has hardly been unaware, but never before has he felt so very _aware_ of anything, or anyone.

John avoids his mouth, where Sherlock aches for him, lips tingling in absence of a hit of the addictive stuff that makes his blood sing. It's something new now. _Fascinating_ , he should think, but all he can do is yearn and scrape his nails down John's back. John who doesn't seem to notice, or care, that Sherlock is going mad for want of him. _Where are the words? Where are the words!_ He can't even remember the language he thinks in anymore.

"I thought it was strange at first," John murmurs against Sherlock's jaw as he bites it. "You started licking your lips all the time." He nuzzles the spot gone deliciously raw and stinging with sensation with the upturn of his nose. Sherlock shudders. "I thought you were just making fun of me." He tugs at Sherlock's tender bottom lip as though he still half-believes that. "But then, I realized you hadn't any idea what you were doing." John soothes Sherlock's mouth with a spate of chaste pecks that make his eyelids flutter. He neither knows nor cares what John is attempting to say, so long as he doesn't _stop._

He braces his hands on John's hips, suppressing a protracted moan as his fingers encounter bespoke finery ornamenting his soldier's fine form. Sherlock ever adores a contradiction; today, he adores more than one. He _wants_ John, for weapon at back and concealed in a holster of the highest quality leather, hand-stitched—another gift of his brother's, then—and for hands that cradle his face tenderly enough to steal his breath. He wants John and wants to give him everything all at once. So, he'll give him everything he has already and steal what he doesn't to give him later. It's a plan.

"Bedroom, _now._"

And so he rediscovers language, such as it is. It isn't _I love you_, which Sherlock has never learned to say. _I will solve you_ is the closest he can hope to come.


End file.
